Letters to the Editor

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Time for gender equity

I agree with Benjamin Shinewald that Jewish communal organizations need to close the gender gap (“It’s 5778, and it’s time to make gender balance a priority,” Dec. 14).
But while Shinewald touches on the current wave of sexual harassment and assault revelations in the world of politics and the media, I would like to make the connections more explicit.

One of the things we are learning about these victimizations is that the men in high places were allowed to get away with their actions because they were supported by other men, whether actively or through silence. Furthermore, many women who were victimized were forced from their jobs or left because they could not bear to stay.
The men who remained were able to climb the professional ladder while they continued their predatory ways, while the women were often unable to find work in their industries. Sometimes it was because the very men they escaped labelled them as difficult or in other negative ways.

Stop and imagine what this might look like in the Jewish community. Could the issue of sexual harassment be a reason why so few women lead Jewish institutions? I believe that the #MeToo moment will come to the Jewish community – it is already happening, but I know that we are not ready.

As victims continue to disclose their experiences daily, we should ask what it would look like to have women at the top tiers of our organizations and what has taken us so long to place them there. Men who hold all or most of the power are less able to recognize the pervasiveness of sexual victimization because it is less familiar to them than it is to women. They may also have little understanding of what a disclosure looks and sounds like, as well as how to respond. Working together, however, female and male leaders can better address this problem.

Guila Benchimol
Toronto


Rewriting history

Given that history and facts are irrelevant to those who deny a Jewish connection to the land of – and now the country we know as – Israel and its rightful capital, Jerusalem, why do we keep repeating those facts over and over? Our enemies are surely deaf to them.
Memory is short and history is rewritten almost daily by those who hate us. Until anti-Semitism – that vile, pernicious disease – is cured, the truth is the only inoculation we have to prevent the lies and distortions from infecting others and to combat a rewriting of a history that generations to come will read, be taught and believed.

Ron Hoffman
Toronto


The article by Mordechai Ben-Dat (“No hope for peace without Jerusalem recognition,” Dec. 28), was extremely informative, especially today, when not many people are really informed about the history of Jerusalem and its ties to the Jewish people. Even within our own Jewish community, many have no real knowledge about the history of the Middle East, Israel, both ancient and modern, or Jerusalem. Many Jews, as well as the community at large, have not fully studied nor understood what the United Nations Security Council decision to vote against the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel really meant.

We squandered our opportunity to stand up and speak to those who seek to distort the truth. Instead, I heard, day in and day out, discussions on television and radio about how the Jewish people do not want peace, and how they have no right to claim Jerusalem as their capital.

My question to our Jewish leaders is: where are you? Why are you not representing our national history and all of our sacrifices in order to make peace on these programs? Why doesn’t anyone state Israel’s case in simple terms, as Ben-Dat did, and challenge what is being presented as honest discussion?

It is no wonder that today, more than 70 years after the Holocaust, we witness those who want to rewrite the history of the Jews and challenge the legitimacy of their connection to Israel and Jerusalem, when we ourselves are not fully prepared to stand up and challenge those who want to present a one-sided discussion as a factual and honest dialogue.

Miriam Abbou
Toronto